Adelaide, AU.- “Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now” will bring together the audacious best of contemporary art straight from London’s internationally acclaimed Saatchi Gallery – arguably the biggest influence on contemporary British art over the past 25 years. It features groundbreaking works that challenge conventional artistic sensibilities, created by more than forty of the new generation of daring British contemporary artists. “Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now” will be on view at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide from 30th July until 23rd October.
“Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now” will provide an incredibly rare opportunity to engage Australian audiences with the new generation of UK artists through their cutting-edge works. Audiences will be able to view works by more than 40 of the UK’s most important and challenging emerging contemporary artists across media including installation, assemblages, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and printmaking. “British Art Now” will be the biggest exhibition ever mounted by the AGSA, taking three quarters of the museum’s display space, and the first time that the Saatchi Gallery have mounted an exhibition in the Southern Hemisphere. Twelve years ago, the National Gallery of Australia cancelled the provocative “Sensation” exhibition of contemporary art from London’s Saatchi Gallery the gallery’s director deciding the exhibition was “too close to the market.”
Among the 150 works will be sculptures, photography, painting and installations from artists including Hurvin Anderson, Matthew Darbyshire, Donald Urquhart, Jonathan Baldock and Karla Black. Although the new exhibition will will feature mostly new British contemporary art, several older works will be on view, including Tracey Emin’s My Bed (a life-size installation of Emin’s messed-up bed alongside a pile of personal detritus), which caused a sensation when it was first displayed in 1998 (but which was not part of the “Sensation” exhibition).
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), is the premier arts institution in the Australian state of South Australia. It has, after Victoria, the largest state art collection in Australia. With a large collection of more than 35,000 works of art and more than 510,000 visitors annually, the AGSA is renowned for its leading collections of Australian art (notably Indigenous Australian and colonial art), European art and Asian art, as well as for its innovative exhibitions. The gallery was established in 1881, and has existed at its current location since 1900. Subsequent renovations and a significant extension of the building which opened in 1996 added contemporary display space without compromising the interior of the original Victorian building. Visit : www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/